by David Dale.
In seeking to establish what is the most unpopular program on television, we must apply principles of fairness. It would be too easy just to scroll down to number 2000 in the weekly ratings chart, and reveal that a mere 1000 Australians tuned to the pay station ESPN to watch Live: Dutch Football.

That claim only remains plausible until you look at the city-by-city breakdown, and discover that every one of those Netherphiles lives in Brisbane. Then you realise there must be more to it.

It's all about how the ratings are calculated. The OzTAM organisation estimates audience numbers by examining data from peoplemeter boxes attached to TV sets in 4,000 households in the mainland capitals. About a quarter of those households are subscribers to pay TV. So when the chart seems to say 1,000 Australians were watching Live: Dutch Football, it means that in its sample of pay tv homes OzTAM found one person who was watched the cloggies -- and that person happened to be in Brisbane (where the sample size is 615 households). Statistical licence may allow OzTAM's computer to convert one north eastern insomniac into 1,000 national viewers, but it doesn't let this column cease from exploring.

Since three quarters of Australian homes do not have access to pay TV, it would be unfair to single out any subscrition program as Australia's least watched. Doubtless thousands more Australians would be glued to Dutch football if it was on broadcast television, which is accessible to 98 per cent of us.

So lets move up the chart to find that the least watched free to air program, ranked at 1,931, is Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, pulling 1,000 viewers to Channel Nine. Shocking news. Have Australians become so consumed with self-loathing that we cannot find pleasure in the national marsupial? Actually no. Skippy only plays in Perth (where OzTAM's sample size is 475 households). What we want to know is the least watched program showing on broadcast television in all mainland capitals.

This lifts us to number 1,848 in the chart -- Mandarin News on SBS, estimated by OzTAM to have 2,000 viewers. But is it reasonable to expect Australians to rush to a program in a language spoken by less than 5 per cent of the population? Of course not.

So these are the least watched English-language programs shown on a broadcast channel in every mainland capital: Weatherwatch and Music (3,000 viewers for SBS); National Press Club Address (6,000 viewers for ABC); Kenneth Copeland (8,000 viewers for Ten); Jesse Duplantis Ministries (13,000 viewers for Nine); Guthy Renker Australia (27,000 for Seven).

Dammit, we still have doubts. That bunch of religious messages and shopping opportunities are only visible when we're asleep. If this exercise is to reveal anything about national tastes, it must find the programs least watched when most viewers are available and alert enough to make informed decisions. That is this column's project for next week. Please place your bets (below) on what will be each station's most unpopular programs between 6pm and 10.30pm this week.

The Tribal Mind column appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald, and earlier columns can be read at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind . Click here for the latest update on last night's ratings. David Dale is the author of 'Who We Are - A miscellany of the new Australia' (Allen and Unwin).

OzTAM responds
The CEO of OzTAM, Kate Inglis-Clark, sent this comment on the way The Tribal Mind used (or abused) the ratings chart:

"To the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald
David Dale's Tribal Mind column on 28 February makes entertaining reading, but unfortunately it is based on a misunderstanding of OzTAM's data .
The OzTAM service is worlds best practice in television audience measurement. Our panels sample sizes are amongst the largest in the world for and are sufficiently robust to meet the stated needs of our television and media agency clients.
Mr. Dale's article misrepresents the acceptable sample size. Responsible use of estimates that are drawn from a sample in general and television viewing estimates in particular would dictate not using a ratings estimate based a sample of a few persons to draw any inference.
Estimates drawn from ever smaller subsets of any sample will be subject to the effects of sampling variation and caution is required when the sample size is small.
As part of OzTAM's commitment to accurate and reliable data ratings data we provide clear industry agreed guidelines and regular presentations to subscribers of OzTAM data about the responsible use of the data with clear warnings when sizes are below acceptable thresholds."

by David Dale.
This is about the things that are the new. Not new, but the new. The topic probably would have made a book, but since articles are the new books (what with the shrinking of attention spans), I have made it a short feature. Consider these quotes:

Folk Is The New Black (title of latest album by Janis Ian).
Fatisthenewblack (name of self-esteem website).
"After 60 years of ridicule, Vegan is the new black" (Vegan Society press release).
"Jazz is the new rock n roll and the new black" (website of Sanity music store).
"Why cricket is the new rock and roll: The players may wear fusty all white, but it's the new black too" (Eurosport site).
"Poetry, it seems, is not the new rock'n'roll, but the new Prozac" (The Independent, UK).
"If the world of international politics can be compared to the fashion industry, then 'soft power' is the new black" (International Association for Political Science Students newsletter).
"With new anti-sweatshop creations being paraded at this year's Australian Fashion Week, is equity the new black and are sweatshops the new fur?" (Workers Online).
"Falsetto is the new black. It's very in at the moment, with The White Stripes the latest to abide by this trend" (Rocknerd site).
"VoIP is IN. It's the new black" (People to People, the torrent tracker site).
"The new black in biocontrol is immunocontraception. It is a method whereby a sexually transmitted viral disease from the target species is genetically modified" (Biochemist Brendan Duffy site).
"Red is the new black -- or is it?" (Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation).
"Suits are seen as old-fashioned and boring at a time when business is reinventing itself as the new rock 'n' roll" (Galt Global Review site).
"The new rock n roll in television is secret cameras" (Ezilon infobase site).
"Bargains are the new black. The good news for those of us whose last name isn't Hilton is that cheap is the new expensive" (Voyeur magazine, published by Virgin Blue airline).
"Among race goers at Flemington on November 1, green is the new black. It's a cliche I know, and every season we seem to have a 'new black', but honestly it was overwhelmingly the colour of choice for the Melbourne Cup" (Victorian racing website).
"Who knows, South Africa just might be the new Australia. Or the new rock 'n' roll" (wine column, The Guardian).

If you put "the new black" into Google, you are offered 1,760,000 entries. Refine the search by adding the word Australia, and you get 138,000 entries.

We learn two things from all this: 1) journalists and marketers and unimaginative; 2) the world needs a new "the new". Below, we are accepting nominations for the new "the new black" and the new "the new rock n roll".

David Dale is the author of 'Who We Are -- A Miscellany of the new Australia' (Allen and Unwin). To read earlier columns, go to www.smh.com.au/tribalmind . Click here for the latest update on last night's TV ratings.

Click here for the answer to whether Australians are watching more or less television these days.

What's Wrong With This Picture? a three-star review in this week's Metro.

Zuel writes: "Don't get too precious and snort that 'this Idol joker with the stupid hair couldn't make a decent album'. Put this alongside pretty much any of the bright/dumb Cali-punks – such as Blink-182 and Good Charlottes – and it isn't out of place. Sure, every song works the same format, Harding's voice gets plenty of studio tweaking and its rebellion is as heartfelt as a McDonald's ad, but the choruses come perfectly packaged, the guitars run headlong, the energy buzzes and, well, it doesn't suck at all."

What do you think of the Australian Idol try-hard punk and his music? What do you think of Australian Idol?

Don't know about you but it was crushing news to hear that the hitherto secret film being made by Our Baz, Our Nicole and Our/Their Russell, referred to as Project Oklahoma by "insiders" (don't you love that term? I come over all New Idea just saying it), was not in fact going to be a new version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

In case you're wondering, that's the one Our Hugh starred in a few years back in London.

What wouldn't we have given to hear Nicole Kidman sing "I'm just a girl who cain't say no (to Scientologists and country singers with big belt buckles)/I'm in a terrible fix"?.

With maybe the typical extravagant Baz Luhrmann all-singing, all-dancing chorus responding with "It's a scandal/It's an outrage/How a gal gets a husband today".

Imagine the frisson of Russell Crowe singing "the farmer and the cowman (and the actor and clubman) should be friends" to a holographic George Piggins.

Or the tabloid frenzy engendered by the Russ/Nic on-screen pash during People Will Say We're In Love.

Now, we had some limited success a while back with the idea of a musical based on the songs of Leif Garrett. Not surprising really given the (free)base material - both the songs and the character - were not exactly top shelf.

But this is just too good an opportunity to miss and rather than rely on these famous creative heavyweights, with their contracts and fears and agents and all the other things that stop people thinking "outside the square" (don't you love that term? I come over all Ad News Weekly just saying it) it requires the collective consciousness, if not the collective genius, of we the general public.

So here's your challenge, your mission if you will. If you choose to accept it (sorry Nic, couldn't help but drop in a reference to the man formerly known as Our Tom there. Don't worry, it shouldn't happen again) the rewards may not be financial immediately but you will have the warm inner glow.

Come up with the perfect musical Our Baz, Our Nic and Our/Their Russ can make into a movie, explain how the songs can be tailored for the stars and before you know it that knock on the door could be a producer. (Or, yes, a member of the police's anti-stalking unit, but hey, life's a risk.)

You know how much we love Hollywood stars. They sell magazines, they draw screaming crowds to premieres, we love talking about what they're wearing or who they're seeing and we don't begrudge their $US20 million salaries.

For years A-listers have reliably sold cinema tickets in this country. But something's gone badly wrong ... stars are losing their drawing power.

* On top of the box office charts last weekend was the spoof romantic comedy Date Movie. While our cinemas are filled with films starring Oscar nominees, we preferred one with Sophie Monk.

* Charlize Theron did everything right. She made a highly publicised star tour, which guarantees a movie will open here. North Country was her first movie after winning an Oscar. She was even nominated again for it. And she worked with the director of the much-loved Whale Rider. Every box ticked.

But North Country flopped spectacularly, taking just $700,000 before dropping out of the top 20.

* King Kong DID have stars in Naomi Watts and Jack Black. It also had an all-conquering director and glowing reviews. But it took not much more than $21 million - half what some industry insiders were predicting. While it deserved a wider audience, the idea didn't click with enough viewers and the length was a negative. The stars didn't get us there.

The lesson ...

Stars bring a lot to a movie - huge publicity, creative input, quality performances and especially insurance for international sales then later release on DVD and television.

But they seem to matter less to movie-goers. We are being more discerning. Maybe it's all those magazines showing photos of stars dressed down without their make-up or competition from reality TV celebrities.

What seems to appeal to us is the whole package - a rich adaptation of a classic novel for children in Narnia, a beautifully crafted romance in Brokeback Mountain, a lavish adaption of a bestseller in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Maybe the people who should be getting those spectacular salaries are directors and writers. Box office takings suggest we want good, well-told stories rather than stars.

What influences you in buying a cinema ticket? Are there stars you'd watch in anything? And who no longer rates?

by David Dale.
This blog is now history. Click here to read and comment on the latest update on TV audiences.

Update 10am Friday, February 24
Seven got a little alarm bell in last night's results. One of its most reliable hits, Lost, dropped 150,000 viewers from the previous week. Some of them went to Medium on Ten and some of them may have gone over to the ABC to get an early start on The West Wing.

Nevertheless, Seven won the night with a prime time audience share of 32.3 per cent, with Nine on 27.8, Ten on 21.1, ABC on 13.9, and SBS on 4.9.

Last night the ABC launched The West Wing, the intelligent US drama series it bought from Nine because The One could not schedule it consistently. The 90 minute showing averaged 501,000 viewers.

Update 10am Thursday, February 23
Channel Seven now has Australia locked up four days a week. Prison Break has pulled further ahead of its rival House on Wednesdays, and Seven's news and Today Tonight get the viewing pattern established at 6pm every night. Since most people don't watch TV on Saturday nights, Nine's only hope now is to come up with a blockbuster every Friday and every Sunday.

Update 10am Wednesday, February 22
Australia's richest man couldn't save Channel Nine last week, and Australia's most popular woman couldn't save Channel Nine last night. Magda Szubanski was flattened by the juggernaut that is Dancing With The Stars.

Szubanski regularly comes out on top when the research agency Audience Development Australia surveys viewers on the celebrities they most recognise and most like. No doubt that was why Nine thought a collection of her comedy sketches might work against the new season of last year's most popular Australian program. And Nine might have hoped Australians were growing a bit sated with the cheesiness of Daryl Somers and his sliding celebs.

In the end, Magda's Funny Bits attracted 856,000 viewers in the mainland capitals, while Dancing With The Stars attracted 2.2 million -- the same audience as last year. Clearly Australia has not lost its appetite for dairy products.

The viewers then stayed up late to follow the Winter Olympics, giving Seven an easy victory for the night -- 40.3 per cent of the prime time audience (Nine got 24.0%, Ten 18.9%, ABC 12.8% and SBS 4.1).

More bad news for Nine: those viewers who can't stand the glare from Dancing With The Stars and the snow in Torino are most likely to seek relief with Channel Ten. The ten most watched shows of Tuesday night with people aged 16-39 included The Biggest Loser, The Simpsons, Rove Live, The OC and Futurama.

Update 10am Tuesday, February 21
The ABC says it doesn't worry about the ratings, but that doesn't stop it celebrating on the rare occasions when one of its programs attracts more than a million viewers. The champagne will be flowing at Ultimo today, because last night an ABC show pulled 1.3 million in the mainland capitals.

Who could achieve such a feat? Of course, it had to be Andrew Denton -- Australia's most liked man, according to the "Q-scores" poll (which also finds that Magda Szubanski is Australia's most liked woman). Last year Denton managed 1.6 million viewers when he interviewed Our Princess Mary. Last night's equally glittering guest was Billy Connolly (who, as husband of Pamela Stephenson, has become The National In-Law now that Tom is no longer with Nicole).

It's unlikely the Prime Minister will be joining the ABC's celebration. Now the audience figure is out, he knows that 1.3 million potential voters have heard Billy Connolly say this: "John Howard's only function is to let you know what Harry Potter's going to look like when he's old. I would go miles to avoid meeting him. What a boring little man."

Channel Seven won the night with a prime time audience share of 30.9 per cent, with Nine on 26.4%, Ten on 18.9% and the ABC on 17.4% (its best share so far this year).

Update 10am Monday, February 20
Channel Nine's annoying trick of making viewers wait three months for the second half of last year's CSI finale seems to have worked. Nine showed the first hour of the Quentin Tarantino episode in November, and the second hour last night. Despite dire predictions that Australians would illegally download the finale from the internet, Nine managed to attract 1.8 million viewers to a cop franchise that was supposed to be dying. And most of the frustrated forensic fans stuck around for the MIami extension of the franchise.

Nine easily won the night, with a prime time audience share of 33.5 per cent, followed by Seven on 25.5%, and Ten on 18.4 per cent.

How Australia watched last week
Kerry Packer almost saved his network from embarrassment, but even he couldn't ensure that Channel Nine was still The One at the start of the ratings season. Seven won the first official ratings week with a prime time share of 30.7 per cent, followed by Nine on 28.7 per cent, Ten on 21.9 per cent, ABC on 14.2 per cent and SBS on 4.6 per cent.

A documentary called The Big Fella: The Extraordinary Life of Kerry Packer drew 1.5 million viewers in the mainland capitals on Thursday -- a bigger audience than any other show Nine has put against Seven's hit drama Lost. And Packer's creation -- the one day cricket -- drew 1.6 million viewers on Sunday and 1.8 million on Tuesday.

A few years ago, those successes would have been enough to give Nine the week's biggest audience share. But this year, Seven is overflowing with popular American dramas, as well as having the Winter Olympics to prop up its late night schedule. Tomorrow Seven adds a new series of Dancing With The Stars to its lineup, suggesting it could be weeks, if not months, before Australia's oldest network climbs back on top.

Nine launched Bert Newton's Family Feud last Monday in an attempt to fix its most urgent problem -- low audiences at the start of the night when the viewing pattern is established.

Bert began with a disappointing 678,000 viewers, got pre-empted by the cricket on Tuesday, and ended the week with a disastrous 511,000. His rival, Deal or No Deal, averaged 865,000 and set Seven on the path to victory in the current affairs hour from 6pm every night.

Nine must now place its hopes on Australia's most popular woman, Magda Szubanski, whose sketch collection, Magda's Funny Bits, starts tomorrow night.

Ten's fun-with-the-fatties reality show The Biggest Loser opened with a solid 1.4 million viewers on Monday but had slimmed to 1.1 million by Friday. Nevertheless Ten won the week with its target 16-39 age group, and its medical drama House is breathing down the neck of Seven's Prison Break on Wednesday.

The ABC doesn't recognise the ratings season, so its most watched shows last week were the old favourites Australian Story and The Bill (each with a million viewers). SBS made a rare appearance in the top 100 with Mythbusters, which, at Number 97, found itself 30,000 viewers ahead of Bert's Family Feud (at 101). These were the week's top programs:

Closing the gate: Many readers (see below) have sent comments wondering when Seven will resume showing episodes of Stargate and its spinoffs. We asked Seven, and got the answer that the Stargates will definitely be back this year, but no start date has yet been decided. Seven says it has so much good new drama arriving from America, some shows will have to wait till the second half of the year. There is no point sending more messages to Tribal Mind asking about Stargate. We have no power in the matter. It would be more useful to direct such requests to Seven. Unless you have something new and different to say on the subject, correspondence is closed.

"You know what they say about bloody Great Danes," Shaun Ryder mumbles in the band-room bathroom. "I mean, the sex was good."
Who knows what the Happy Mondays frontman is talking about? It has taken us eight hours to get this much out of him on the eve of his Good Vibrations appearance.

In 1989's Winter of Love, in the middle of Manchester's ascendancy as the all-partying, all-pill-popping centre of the musical universe, Ryder's band the Happy Mondays had it made, but then they imploded and everything went to pot.
Is Shaun Ryder the most tragic man in music? Who else could compete with him in the downward-slides scale. Who do you nominate? Why?

Friends, consumers, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury the album, not to praise it. The evil that men commit to tape lives after them, the good is oft interred with their demo tapes, So let it be with the album ... Really?

The largest music store chain in Australia announced that they will install "music kiosks" where you can for a fee select up to 74 minutes of music, from any album single or other release, burn it onto a disc/download it onto your MP3 player, and walk out of the store with a self-created CD.

Setting aside the question why would you go to a store to do what you can do at home (essentially for free) if you have access to the net and a burner, there are a couple of other issues.

If you can walk into a shop and pick the three or four songs that you know and therefore want to have on a CD, what is the incentive for an artist to record 10 or 12 songs and put them out together? You know, what used to be called in prehistoric times an "album".

Does it matter? If you want to consume your music in three or five or one-song bursts why shouldn't you? It's not as if every album released lives up to the promise of "all killer, no filler". The return of the EP (another prehistoric term: what used to be called an extended play record with four or five tracks) can't be a bad thing. Digging up particular tracks, favourite moments and putting them together much in the way you would have made a mixed tape back in the day, sounds like fun.

And some people, let's not name any names here but we all know them, make great singles but run out of puff across 40 or 50 minutes. It should be remembered after all, that the idea of the "album" as something other than a collection of one-off songs which were already known as really only existed for 40 of the nearly 100 years of recorded music.

Of course it could make for interesting nights at awards like the Brit Awards where a group like the Kaiser Chiefs - who had a couple of killer singles and another which was surprisingly consistent and good - might in the future be named Best British Group for a handful of songs downloaded at your local record store.

And the soon-to-be announced Australian Music Prize, recognising the best album released by an Australian act in the past year, will be a comfy anachronism mulled over in some dusty corner of the Taxi Club.

Maybe it is just old farts - the kind who still play songs on an album in the order they came in; who transfer whole albums rather than particular tracks onto their MP3 player; who prattle on about "artistic statements"; who probably even have vinyl at home - who think there's something odd here. And what do they know?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.

by David Dale
This column can totally understand what Portia de Rossi sees in Ellen DeGeneres. She's smart, sweet, mischievous, self-deprecating, and game for anything. Ellen DeGeneres is the single best reason this column has ever encountered to start subscribing to pay television.

In case you don't follow the gossip mags, Portia de Rossi is an Australian actress (she appeared nude with Elle McPherson and Kate Fischer in the 1994 movie Sirens) who stars in an American sitcom called Arrested Development, which Channel Seven shows late at night because the humour is deemed too cynical for the Australian prime time audience. De Rossi is also the sweetheart of Ellen DeGeneres, an American standup comic who did the voice of forgetful Dory in Finding Nemo and who now hosts a wonderful talk show on the pay TV station Arena between 5pm and 6pm every weeknight.

This column happened upon The Ellen DeGeneres Show this week while trying to escape from Bert Newton (click here for his latest ratings). We really wanted to love Bert's new game show Family Feud, but he looked so scary and walked so painfully and spoke so crudely (calling one poor contestant "Not only ugly but stupid") that when the ads came on we sought relief in a bit of channel surfing.

On our Foxtel remote, Channel Nine is at number 100 and Arena is at number 105, and that was where we found Ellen. She had a brass band in the studio and was dancing along with it, except she had a dicky knee. She flicked ricotta at a guest cook. She promised to predict the result of the Superbowl but wasn't entirely sure who was playing. Hilarious and occasionally poignant, she was everything we had hoped for from Bert, and more -- like Graham Kennedy in his prime.

We'd been thinking of cancelling our subscription to Foxtel because the child in the household has now seen every episode of The Simpsons five times and the adults rarely get time, what with the pressure to keep up with Lost, Desperate Housewives, and simultaneously, Prison Break and House (by jumping during the ads). The discovery that Ellen is on every afternoon changed our minds, and also reminded this column that it was time for our regular checkup on the state of health of the pay industry.

If we're to take their word for it, the pay people are going gangbusters. This week Foxtel put out a press release which started thus: "In a stunning record performance, subscription television homes spent almost 60 per cent of their time watching subscription television programming over the just completed summer ratings period. The ratings ... are further proof subscription television is winning the battle for the remote amongst television viewers."

The release said that between November 27, 2005 and February 11, 2006 (what most people call The Silly Season), 20 per cent of all viewing time in the mainland capitals was spent on pay TV. And what did the pay fans actually watch, while the other 80 per cent of Australians were enjoying tennis, cricket and Ghost Whisperer? Foxtel refuses to comment on the performance of individual programs, but according to the ratings measurement agency OZTAM, these were

Yep, you read it right: out of the four million Australians who supposedly have access to pay TV and who watched it in "stunning record" numbers in January, the most popular show was seen by 184,000. And the first episode of the massively publicised saviour of Australian drama, Love My Way, managed just 71,000.

But of course, that's all going to change now Ellen DeGeneres is on the scene.

Footnote: Several readers have pointed out that The Ellen DeGeneres Show is also on Channel Ten -- at noon each weekday. The Ten people tell us that they are required by contract to always be a week behind Arena in the episodes they show. Topicality and better timeslot may not be quite enough to justify subscribing to Foxtel.

The Tribal Mind column appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald and updates the ratings every weekday. Earlier columns can be found at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind . Click here to read and comment on the latest update on TV audiences. David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A miscellany of the new Australia (Allen and Unwin).

It's never as dark as a cinema - and there are occasional distractions from swooping bats, passing planes and someone bumping a car horn - but there's still a lot to like about the drive-in.

At one of Sydney's two remaining drive-ins last Saturday night, there was a casual, late-summer atmosphere to rival all the outdoor cinemas in parks across the city. Except that people were in their cars - sedans facing towards the screen and station wagons and four-wheel drives facing backwards with rear doors open.

Some were sitting around their cars in fold-up chairs and beanbags.

Walk The Line, which has opened strongly taking $5.28 million in its first two weekends, attracted a good crowd in a double feature with The Family Stone ($5 million in seven weeks). On the other screen were Just Friends ($1 million on its opening weekend) and Waiting (which bombed before Christmas).

The heyday of the Sydney drive-in was the '60s to the early '80s. When the Frenchs Forest site opened in 1956, the Herald reported that some locals turned up on horseback.

Once there were 13 sites but waves of social changes have swept over them ... the arrival of colour television, home video and multiplexes, the popularity of smaller cars with bucket seats, stick shifts and head-rests, the introduction of random breath testing and more recently, the popularity of DVDs, downloading and home cinema.

Also contributing to the downturn was the demand for the land, especially for building shopping centres (Chullora), markets (Parklea) and medium-density housing (Dundas, Frenchs Forest and Matraville).

Daylight saving hasn't helped either. Last Saturday, Walk The Line was due to start at 8.30pm but, with a late rush at the gates, it was closer to 8.45pm. That meant The Family Stone must have run until almost 1am.

At the height of summer, King Kong ran with an interval well past midnight. But while waiting for the movie to start at dusk, there was a great Sydney moment as a kookaburra perched on the giant screen and laughed for a good half-minute.

Here are some thoughts about the contemporary drive-in ...

* Their reputation as "passion pits" no longer seems appropriate. Instead of teenagers, most cars are filled with older couples and families. It might depend on the program but it seems like the movies - a good double feature - are the attraction rather than just being alone in a car with a date.

* Walk The Line was pretty much a perfect drive-in movie: entertaining, dramatic, strong story. Because of its length and mid-summer release, King Kong worked less well. By reputation, the all-time best drive-in movies have included Jaws and Titanic. It's not generally considered a great place for sub-titled and art films.

* The drive-in remains a no-frills way of seeing a movie. Once there were playgrounds to distract kids - no longer. In the US, it must have been great fun decades ago when some drive-ins featured pony rides, a while-you-watch laundry service, talent shows, "golfette", fireworks, stunt cars, boxing, "monkey villages" or baby parades.

* The advantages of the drive-in centre on the atmospherics - like being at home, you can eat, drink, chat and get cosy whenever you like without upsetting strangers. The FM radio sound is much better than the old-style speakers.

Kids can still wear pyjamas and fall asleep whenever they get tired. On a balmy night, you can wander off for an ice-cream while keeping an eye on the screen, catching the sound from car to car. On cold nights, you can snuggle under a blanket.

* The disadvantages? Unless you live near Bass Hill or Blacktown, it's a decent drive in Sydney. On cold nights, the windows can fog up. The food you can buy is half-time-at-the-footie standard. And if you only want one movie, the entry price is steep.

But, hey, you're part of cinema tradition immortalised in American Graffiti and Bob Segar singing about making front-page drive-in news.

When "The End" flashes on screen, there's still a mad rush to start the engine and get to the exit first. You don't even need to walk to the car.

If you still go to the drive-in, what's your experience? If not, what would make you go back? And what are your favourite memories of the drive-in?

by David Dale.
Let's get one thing straight right away: this is not trivia. Significa is a better name, because the test you are about to undertake goes right to the heart of what it means to be a 21st century Australian.

The citizens of any nation operate on certain shared assumptions, based on the stories, songs and images they absorbed during their lives. This quiz is drawn from the experiences shared by millions of Australians in the past 20 years: the most seen movies and TV shows and the most purchased publications, DVDs and CDs. It is, if you like, a check on your cultural literacy.

Give yourself one point for each correct answer. We won't consider it cheating if you seek clues in the treasure chest called www.smh.com.au/tribalmind, which displays lists of Australia's all time favourite movies, TV shows, DVDs and songs.

If you score more than 15, you're in tune with the national psyche. And you'll have discovered that, for better or worse, Australia's tastes lean heavily towards American entertainment. Regardless of how you scored, tell us what else should be included in a thorough test of mass awareness.

First, source these lines:
1. "How long can we look at each other down the barrel of a gun?"
2. "I don't know where I am. I don't know what's going on. I think I lost somebody but I can't remember."
3. "For a moment, he thought he heard a woman's voice ... the wisdom of the ages ... whispering up from the chasms of the earth."
4. "Still, enough about me leg. Let me tell you about the rest of me."
5. "Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?"
6. "They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they didn't hold with such nonsense."
7. "I'm sorry, the position of annoying talking animal has already been filled."
8. "Now you belong to heaven, and the stars spell out your name."
9. "Promise me you'll survive, that you won't give up, no matter what happens."
10. "I think we've all arrived at a very special place, spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically."
11. "Okay, so you're a rocket scientist. That don't impress me much. So you got the brain but have you got the touch?"
12. "Bite them! Be ruthless, whatever it takes. Bend them to your will!"

Now consider these questions ...
13. Who were Martin; his secretary Betty; his children Samantha, Debbie, Jenny and Simon; and his visitors Nudge and Arthur?
14. What did Nikki Webster sing to more than six million Australians?
15. Who defeated whom in the men's final of the Australian Open in January, 2005?
16. Who defeated whom in the final of Australian Idol in November, 2004?
17. What sells 720,000 copies a week? 18. What sells 640,000 copies a month?
19. To whom did Mary Abacus leave her business empire?
20. Whose kiss in a collapsed mineshaft was seen by 2.5 million Australians?

For answers (and explanations of why these details were included in the quiz), click here.

The Tribal Mind column by David Dale appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald. Click here to read and comment on the latest update on TV audiences. More background on Australia's favourite films, programs, books and CDs, can be found in Who We Are -- A miscellany of the new Australia (Allen and Unwin).

by David Dale.
These are the answers and explanations for the quiz designed to test your awareness of the books, films, TV shows, DVDs and songs enjoyed by most Australians in the past 20 years. Don't look below until you've tested yourself. And when you have, tell us what else should be included in a test of modern Australian cultural literacy.

The sources of the quotes ...

1. "How long can we look at each other down the barrel of a gun?"
From You're The Voice on Whispering Jack by John Farnham, the top selling Australian CD album (accredited with sales of 1.3 million by the Australian Record Industry Association).

2. "I don't know where I am. I don't know what's going on. I think I lost somebody but I can't remember."
Dory in Finding Nemo, our top selling DVD of all time.

3. "For a moment, he thought he heard a woman's voice ... the wisdom of the ages ... whispering up from the chasms of the earth."
The last sentence of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, the No 2 best selling book of the past 20 years.

4. "Still, enough about me leg. Let me tell you about the rest of me."Crocodile Dundee, the most successful Australian film ever made (box office of $48 million).

5. "Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?"
Phoebe's song from Friends, the top rating sitcom ever shown here (audiences above 2 million in the mainland capitals between 1996 and 2004).

6. "They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they didn't hold with such nonsense."
The second sentence of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, top selling book of the past 20 years (its five sequels are all among the top ten bestsellers).

7. "I'm sorry, the position of annoying talking animal has already been filled."
Donkey in Shrek 2, the No 2 selling DVD and No 2 cinema box office earner ($50 million).

8. "Now you belong to heaven, and the stars spell out your name."
From the rewritten Candle in the Wind, the top selling single in history, performed by Elton John at Diana Spencer's funeral, the most watched TV program in Australian history.

9. "Promise me you'll survive, that you won't give up, no matter what happens."
Jack talking to Rose in Titanic, Australia's top grossing film of all time ($58 million at the box office).

10. "I think we've all arrived at a very special place, spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically."
Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, No 3 selling DVD.

11. "Okay, so you're a rocket scientist. That don't impress me much. So you got the brain but have you got the touch?"
From Shania Twain's Come On Over, the No 2 selling CD album (1.1 million).

12. "Bite them! Be ruthless, whatever it takes. Bend them to your will!"
Sheepdog Fly in Babe, the No 2 moneymaking Australian film ($37 million).

The background on the questions ...

13. Who were Martin; his secretary Betty; his children Samantha, Debbie, Jenny and Simon; and his visitors Nudge and Arthur?
Characters in Hey Dad, the longest running home-made sitcom (on Seven from 1984 to 1994).

14. What did Nikki Webster sing to six million Australians?Under Southern Skies at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, the No 2 most watched program of all time (more than 6 million viewers in the mainland capitals).

15. Who defeated whom in the men's final of the Australian Open in January, 2005?
Marat Safin defeated Lleyton Hewitt in the most watched TV program of the 21st century (4 million viewers).

16. Who defeated whom in the final of Australian Idol in November, 2004?
Casey Donovan defeated Anthony Callea in the most watched non-sporting TV program of the 21st century (3.4m viewers).

17. What sells 720,000 copies a week? 18. What sells 640,000 copies a month?The Sunday Telegraph, top selling newspaper. Women's Weekly, top selling magazine. Next in sales come the Sunday Herald-Sun, of Melbourne (620,000) and Woman's Day (516,000)

19. To whom did Mary Abacus leave her business empire?
The Solomon family, in Bryce Courtenay's Solomon's Song, the best selling Australian book. Courtenay has five books with sales of more than half a million: Solomon's Song, The Potato Factory, Four Fires, Tommo and Hawk and Matthew Flinders' Cat.

20. Whose kiss in a collapsed mineshaft was seen by 2.5 million Australians?
Cops Maggie Doyle and P. J. Hasham in Blue Heelers, the longest running home-made TV drama (1994-2006). Seven will show the final 11 episodes later this year.

Tell us, below, what else should be included in a test of modern Australian cultural literacy.

For earlier episodes of The Tribal Mind column, go to www.smh.com.au/tribalmind
More information on Australia's favourite films, CDs, books and TV shows can be found in Who We Are -- A miscellany of the new Australia, by David Dale (Allen and Unwin).

by David Dale.
Australians have a love/hate relationship with scandal. One year we seek it, the next year we shun it. And right now, according to the latest sales figures for the magazine industry, our passion for scandal is on the upswing.

The most consistent growth area in Australian reading over the past year has been weeklies devoted to embarrassing rumours and invasive photos of actors, royals, musicians, sports people, and models.

The incisive social observer Frank Sinatra was the first to note the importance of scandal in the reading habits of Australians. During a concert tour in 1974, he offered this analysis of our media: "They're called parasites, because they take and take and take and never give, absolutely never give ... I say they're bums and they're always gonna be bums, every one of them. There are just a few exceptions to the rule: some good editorial writers who don't go out in the street and chase people round. It's the scandal man that really bugs you, drives you crazy. It's two-bit type work that they do. They're pimps, they're just crazy. And the broads who work in the press are the hookers of the press. Need I explain that to you?"

In the 1980s the venerable weeklies New Idea and Woman's Day achieved massive sales boosts by shifting their focus from recipes and knitting patterns to revelations about the rich and famous. The pinnacle was reached in 1992, when Woman's Day sold 1.4 million copies of an issue displaying a topless Duchess of York having her toes sucked by a gentleman to whom she was not married. New publications such as Who Weekly and NW arrived to feed the national appetite.

But after the death of Diana Spencer in 1997, Australians turned against the wicked weeklies -- blaming the messengers for the guilty suspicion that our addiction had encouraged the paparazzi to chase princesses. Sales kept sliding until 2004. Last Friday's report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations shows that New Idea has risen 8 per cent over the past 12 months, while OK! is up 6 per cent, Who Weekly and NW are up 5 per cent and Woman's Day is up 2 per cent.

Every week 1.4 million Australians buy a scandal mag -- 63,000 more than a year ago. In the same period 15,000 Australians turned away from serious news: Time was down 12 per cent, Business Review Weekly down 7 per cent, and The Bulletin and Money both down 2 per cent.

The biggest decline was in publications aimed at people under 14 -- Barbie down 43 per cent, K-Zone down 22 per cent, Dmag down 27 per cent, which meant a total of 100,000 buyers lost from the youth market in 12 months.

It seems the kids of today no longer want innocent fun in their reading. They just want celebrity revelations. Wonder where they learned that habit.

Do you enjoy the scandal weeklies? Tell us your theory on why Australians are going back to them, below.

The Tribal Mind column appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald. You can read previous columns at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind and more information on national behaviour in Who We Are -- A miscellany of the new Australia by David Dale (Allen and Unwin) Click here to read and comment on the latest update on TV audiences.

Has meeting people become such a pre-planned business, with speed dating, internet sex (sorry, dating) and the like, that no one meets while going out any more? It was good enough for Princess Mary to meet someone randomly at a bar, but is anyone else doing it anymore or is everybody looking for love on the net?

A few questions, not all of which have answers. Or at least answers that make sense.

1) Why would a dead man scare broadcasters?
You'd make a dead man come. There, I've said it, just like Mick Jagger sang at the Super Bowl half time bash. Did you see a flash of nipple? A flash of lightning from an outraged God?

No? And yet the frilly shirted nancies at the American television network broadcasting the show, still spooked by Janet Jackson letting one of her girls go free two years ago, and the subsequent manufactured outrage from the pursed lipped professional wowsers, edited out the line. Scared? It was practically micturition central at the network.

2) What is happening with the new AC/DC album?
According to stories overseas from people who don't really know any more than you but are paid to speculate, the band's European label, Sony, have rejected the album or asked for something better/other. Something with more denim riffs maybe? Fewer single entendres?

The Australian label, Warner Music, which these days owns AC/DC's career long home Festival Records, knows nothing of this rejection. According to a company mouthpiece "the AC/DC album is as close as it has been for the last 3 years". Curious, yes? Not least because this month marks the sixth anniversary since of their last album.

Now the less charitable among you may be saying why would it take six years, or even six weeks, to write essentially the same song you been writing for 25 years or more. That would be terribly unkind. Some of those songs have slightly different words you know.

3) What is happening with Lenny Kravitz?
A certain vodka company last week trumpeted "a new music project which sees Lenny Kravitz creating an exclusive new track based on his interpretation of the (insert name of vodka here) brand".

What? Please explain mister and ms marketing geniuses. "Kravitz recorded a new song, entitled 'Breathe', in New York, which will be featured in the campaign. Although this collaboration marks the first collaboration with an internationally recognised recording artist, the brief given to Kravitz was exactly the same as the one any world-class artist working with the brand would receive: present your personal interpretation of (vodka thingy) and its core values."

Its core values? To sell more fermented potato product? To get more people pissed and shagging? To talk a load of bollocks? Well if it's the last one, then Kravitz has found a home because this is what he had to say about the new deal: "[White alcohol maker] has had a history of working with great artistic people - like Andy Warhol, Tom Ford, Jean Paul Gaultier, Gianni Versace and Kenny Scharf. I thought it would be interesting to do an artistic collaboration like this and be part of that heritage."

You could say, you silly tosser, who will take you seriously now. But luckily for him, Kravitz doesn't have any credibility to lose.

4) What part of "Our Own Grammy Award Winning Keith Urban" (Trade Mark pending) is still Australian considering every one of his songs sounds like another product of the Nashville interchangeable pop/country song machine and could just as easily be sung (and for all we know is being sung) by some big belt buckle-wearing bozo named Toby or Billy-Joe?

"I resent that what may turn out to be the best critically received gay love movie ever has no gay actors in it," he declared. "I resent that if two gay actors had been cast, this movie would have zero visibility, regardless of its merit. I resent that America will only come to watch fake gays making fake love and I resent that casting the fake gays was the right business decision to make. And I resent that this is how it probably always will be."

It did not take long before 'Queerty' responded thoughtfully: "In a perfect world, we'd like to see more gay actors playing gay parts. But sadly there are not many gay actors we can think of to choose from ... Actors do just that, act. We would not want gay actors to be limited to play only gay roles. So why would we want to limit straight actors to only play straight."

Would Brokeback Mountain, which has opened so strongly in Australia ($3.17 million in two weeks) that it's expanding from 48 to 50 cinemas this week then 85 next week, feel like a different movie with gay actors? Or is the question of their sexuality irrelevant given how brilliantly they act in the movie?

Consider another Hollywood movie that has been controversial for different reasons - Memoirs of a Geisha. Chinese critics have been upset that Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li are playing Japanese roles in a movie that has also opened handsomely here - taking $7.39 million in three weeks. They say the casting, which also includes Malaysian-born Michelle Yeoh, is insensitive because of the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Chinese occupation in the 1930s.

Director Rob Marshall has defended the decision by saying they were cast for their talent, not where they come from: "When you saw Zorba the Greek, and you saw Anthony Quinn play Zorba, was that odd to you because he was Irish and Mexican?"

That's a reasonable point until you look a little closer. Would Hollywood cast, say, a Mexican or a swarthy Australian (like Michael Pate in the 1950s and 1960s) as a Native American these days or would that be seen as insensitive? Would an Australian film-maker cast a dark-skinned actor from another country as an Aboriginal? What would Australian audiences think about an American star playing a canecutter in a version of Summer of the 17th Doll as Ernest Borgnine did in the 1959? Or, when it comes to Memoirs of a Geisha, would Marshall use the same defence if he cast Lindsay Lohan or Natalie Portman as the young geisha and made them look Japanese? I think not.

I'm not saying I know all the answers, just that it's a complex issue. The best actors clearly got the job in Brokeback Mountain and their sexuality is irrelevant. But I feel less comfortable about Memoirs of a Geisha. As a movie, it looks beautiful but lacks the truthfulness and the heart that could have made it memorable.

Maybe the "Pan Asian" approach to casting was a symptom of the movie's problems - a way of selling it to American audiences rather than making the characters credible.

Straight actors playing gay, Chinese actresses playing Japanese or even Americans playing Australians? Does it matter or is any casting acceptable as long as the actors and actresses perform believably? Would you have responded differently to Brokeback Mountain if it starred two gay actors?

by David Dale
There has been some puzzlement about why the Packer empire has decided to appoint a man with limited management experience to run Channel Nine. It must be part of a secret strategy, and I believe I have figured it out. The answer lies in that man's ability to capture an audience previously targeted only by the ABC. Every sign suggests that Australia's oldest station is after Australia's oldest viewers. Nine in 2006 is banking on a geriatric-led recovery.

Exactly a year ago, Eddie McGuire made a thought-provoking observation. No doubt in private life he is an intelligent and stimulating conversationalist, but this was the first time that side of him had been displayed in public.

I was interviewing him about the likely impact of Desperate Housewives on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He said the housewives might be a passing fad. I asked whether he would speed up his notoriously slow delivery of questions (from which he had earned the nickname Fast Eddie) if Millionaire looked like losing viewers. He said:

"I'd think about it, but this is one of the few shows that gives families time to talk while they are watching. As everything else in life gets paced up, this has gone the other way, and I like to think there's still room for that in television."

That statement is, at this point, our only clue to how McGuire will run Nine. Of course, Desperate Housewives was not a passing fad -- it averaged 2.1 million viewers in the mainland capitals last year. But Millionaire did astonishingly well against it, averaging 1.3 million viewers -- only 200,000 down on its audience in 2004.

How did Fast Eddie survive? By locking in a segment of the community that is uninterested in the sexy scandals of Wisteria Lane. Millionaire's audience consisted almost entirely of Australians over 55. Slow and steady won the aged.

Millionaire was not among the top 50 most watched series of 2005 with all viewers. But it was number 12 in the list of series most watched by people over 55. That group's favourite show was Dancing With The Stars on Seven, followed by Blue Murder, Midsomer Murders, Taggart, Murder Investigation Team and Miss Marple, all on the ABC.

The first sign that Nine wanted a piece of this ABC action came when it programmed repeats of Midsomer Murders over summer. Then it hired 68 year old Bert Newton to revive Family Feud, a game show format first used on American television in 1976. Then it started showing a promo for the year ahead which featured its stars styled to evoke nostalgia for the 1940s -- the period when its new target audience was growing up.

Being under 40, James Packer does not understand this venerable demographic, but he knows that it is the fastest growing segment of the population, that its members are inclined to spend what should have been their kids' inheritance, and that McGuire, while under 55 himself, can speak their language and work at their rhythm.

So it looks as if this will be the year when broadcast television moves from mass marketing to niche marketing, with target audiences tightly defined by age band. Apparently Nine intends to go for people over 55, while Seven will seek people between 25 and 54, and Ten will grab the 16 to 24s.

For the first time in its history, the ABC, left with an audience under 16, will be able to say that it is The Network of The Future.

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- a miscellany of the New Australia (Allen and Unwin). This is a special edition of The Tribal Mind column, which usually appears in The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesdays. Read other columns at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind

by David Dale.
Channel Nine is rearranging the deckchairs, Ten is wondering what's the matter with kids today, and Seven is smiling smugly. Yes, the "official" ratings season is about to start, and already it's clear this will be a dangerous year for the stations and a thrilling year for the viewers. This column needs to make predictions and mix metaphors ...

In the 50th year of television, Channel Nine is like the Liberal Party in 1983 and the Labor Party in 1996. This makes Channel Seven both Bob Hawke and John Howard, which is a stretch. We'd better revise the imagery.

Instead of a political struggle, picture the age-old competition between Australia's commercial networks as a dragdown ripup wrestling match between a tyrannosaurus rex and a brontosaurus, with a raptor running round the sidelines tearing shreds off both giants. After smashing the others into the ground for 49 years, Rex had grown arrogant. In 2005, the brontosaurus suddenly turned carnivore, the raptor kept tripping over its own feet and Rex showed his age.

In 2006, we reckon Bronto will defeat Rex, because he has stronger teeth. The molars that worked for Bronto last year will be augmented by a bunch of new incisors, while Rex's chompers are full of cavities and the other dinosaurs he's called in to help are themselves close to extinction.

Let's pull out of the jurassic jungle for a moment and clarify that prediction: Channel Seven will be the most watched network this year. Nine had the worst audience share in its history in 2005, and this year will be worse.

Making poor Bert Newton prance around at 5.30 won't help Nine win back the news and current affairs hour that starts prime time viewing each night. More than a million viewers have now swapped a Nine habit for a Seven habit, leaving their remotes untouched between news time and bed time (9.40pm). And it's hard to place much hope in the appointment of Eddie McGuire as ringmaster -- a man whose greatest professional asset is the ability to make two quiz questions last one hour.

Seven will win Tuesdays with Dancing With The Stars and Wednesdays with Prison Break (audience of 1.9 million in the mainland capitals last week, with a further 960,000 on Monday). Those who aren't captured by Prison Break will return to House on Ten. Seven will win Thursdays with Lost (2.1 million viewers last week) and Mondays with Desperate Housewives (2.2m this week).

Nine's once reliable cop shows -- Without A Trace, Cold Case and three CSIs -- are fading fast. It needs fresh dramas and comedies, but Seven and Ten have, through the sheer luck of deals done long ago, ended up with all the shows that topped the US ratings (The Ghost Whisperer, Commander in Chief, Supernatural, My Name Is Earl, Everybody Hates Chris), leaving Nine with lame reworkings of old formulas (The Evidence, Close To Home, Invasion, Suspicious Minds). Nine's most interesting drama is Rome, a miniseries about Julius Caesar. But that's risky -- some viewers will consider it more suitable for the ABC (which took over The West Wing because Nine couldn't program it properly).

Last year, when this column raised the question of why the viewers had grown to hate Channel Nine, we received 329 outpourings of rage (click here to read them). And when we quoted Nine's boss, Sam Chisholm, as saying there was "no evidence" viewers were irritated by his programming policies, we got another 87 (click here) .

This year we want to be constructive. Below, lets hear your suggestions on how Fast Eddie might save a noble creature from extinction. If Nine can't buy the best of American comedy and drama, what other content might bring back the viewers? If, between us, we can develop a new strategy for Australia's oldest network, we might deflect the asteroid -- unless you think the T. Rex deserves whatever's coming.

The Tribal Mind column appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald. To read earlier columns, go to www.smh.com.au/tribalmind . David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A guidebook for the New Australia (Allen and Unwin).

by David Dale.
Two terms entered the vocabulary of drama addicts in 2005: "bittorrent" and "shopthestates". Both refer to ways of downloading TV shows via the internet. One is legal, one illegal. Their growing popularity in this country is the result of frustration with the programming policies of our networks. And the more Australians use them, the closer comes the day of doom for commercial television as we know it.

At a forum on the future of television in November, David Leckie, managing director of Channel Seven, was asked if he was worried about people obtaining programs via the net because they can't get what they want from mainstream TV. He said this: "OK, the world's gonna fragment, we know that, but have you seen how hard it is right now to download anything? In five, ten, 15 years nobody knows, but it's not affecting our audience, I can guarantee that. And the two or three people ... I'm sure they've downloaded and they're having fantastic fun talking about Desperate Housewives going to air real time right now in the United States but you know what? It's not really affecting our audiences."

Sam Chisholm, managing director of Channel Nine, was asked if viewers were alienated by the erratic scheduling of their favourite shows. He said there was "no evidence that it irritates viewers" and continued: "Maybe you do shift programs but there's no point in trying to ram down viewers' throats programming that they arguably don't want to see. So we put them on with the best will in the world, but if they don't work then we've got to move them to provide the best programming that they do want. If we did treat them with contempt we'd say well there it is, that's your lot, as they say in the garden program that's your blooming lot, get on with it, but we don't do that, that's why we're moving and shifting things and changing them."

These gentlemen are living in cloud cuckoo land. When this column reported that Nine was going to make viewers wait till next year to see the season finales of CSI, Cold Case, Without a Trace and The Closer, we received 327 emails expressing varying degrees of rage (to read them, go here).

Some 40 readers confessed to using bittorrent, an illegal method of sharing episodes that have been recorded by American viewers and stored in their computers. One reader sent this note about the second half of the Quentin Tarantino story on CSI (not showing on Nine till February):
http://www.torrentspy.com/directory.asp?mode=torrentdetails&id=299649&query=csi+_

Another reader, Toni, offered this idea: "For a LEGAL way of downloading shows from the US (speed, and sometimes quality is better than torrent's too) you can get a prepaid American credit card from somewhere like shopthestates.com (they give you your own American billing address too) and use that on iTunes. It's good for shopping online at any store that will only recognise US-issued credit cards."

This neatly avoids the problem that the Australian iTunes store does not sell TV episodes, and the American iTunes store, which sells episodes of some series after they're shown in the US (at $US1.99 each), will only accept orders from US credit cards.

Of course, our networks could allow the Australian iTunes shop to sell episodes of shows they can't fit into their schedules. But that would require a visionary approach to the diversity of Australian tastes, and an awareness that the days of "the mass market" are over. And there's no evidence that the networks have that.

The Tribal Mind column by David Dale appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald and you'll find all previous columns at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind . David Dale is the author of 'Who We Are' -- A guidebook for the New Australia.

Can you visualise the future of media any better than the TV bosses? In five years time, will we be using our mobiles to watch shows we've downloaded from iStores, while at home we enjoy movies on giant screens connected to our computers? Or will individualised news and entertainment be piped directly into our brains, Matrix-style? We'd love to hear your theories.

Tonight Mardi Gras, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer festival, celebrates 28 years. The 29th street parade, to be held on March 4, still draws a big crowd, but what relevance do the queer theatre, exhibitions, music and comedy have in 2006? There are plenty of events, but is this festival any good?

This forum is now closed. Here's what you said:

There are a "couple of big elephants walking down Oxford Street", says Marcus O'Donnell, the editor-in-chief of the gay street newspaper Sydney Star Observer, "and everyone's pretending they're not there. The first one is labelled quality, and the second one is labelled purpose."
He says Mardi Gras has done an "incredible" job in recent years with few resources, but it must now rise to a higher level.
What do you think? Is Mardi Gras a good arts festival or just a jumble of events with a rainbow umbrella on top?